


Dive

by SevenBetter



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: -unsticks thighs from vinyl seat-, Allusions to her bad past, Allusions to his family troubles, F/M, Grumpy corporate Ben, Like in Rapunzel with the witch's garden except Ben isn't a witch and the garden is a pool, Long suffering student Rey, Rey's frigid British constitution can't take humidity, Swimming Pools, That makes total sense right?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:06:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22688956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SevenBetter/pseuds/SevenBetter
Summary: Ben's house has a pool.Rey's doesn't.She doesn't know him. Never seen him. But that isn't about to stop her.-------A short and snarky modern AU with a light smack of sexual tension.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 18
Kudos: 196





	Dive

In the time it takes Ben to walk from the taxi and climb the four stairs to get into the house, he's already sweating.

He came home in the middle of the summer's steamiest day yet, and he doesn't know what karmic misstep he took to deserve that, but after a crisp and blissful week in Dublin, the oppressive humidity has come for him in full force.

He abandons his suitcase in the foyer and wants desperately to open a window, letting out the musty empty house smell, but there's no way he's letting one whisper of that tropical, torpid air in. So instead he blasts the A/C, finds a football game, and lets the temporary cool of the leather couch soothe the side of his face. Before long the jet lag and work stress overtake him, and he falls into a dreamless, leaden slumber.

\-------

Rey slides the back of her arm over her forehead, slick with sweat. Her thighs are welded to the vinyl seat of her kitchen chair. She reminds herself that when she stands up, to do it slowly, anticipating the slow peel of her legs.

Her fingertips are so damp with sweat that they keep sticking to the pages of her textbook. Four hours into studying for her first industrial engineering course and she's desperate for an escape.

 _You better not want to escape if you're meant to spend your whole career doing this stuff,_ she chides herself, but she counters that her lack of focus has nothing to do with the material, and everything to do with the weather.

The squeak of the ceiling fan invades her thoughts. She looks up and sees the way the entire fixture -fan, lights, and shiny brass base- oscillates back and forth, synchronous with the fan, and she curses whoever decided that this shabby, cheap apartment complex didn't need air conditioning. She might be poor, but she's still a human, with a body, that contains sweat glands.

Desperate for distraction, she glances out the window. From her corner apartment on the fourth floor, she can just spy over the fence.

To the pool.

The pool that has been unoccupied since well before the _first_ record breaking summer day...

  
...which was eight days ago. 

Rey's on her ninth long day of staring, longing, yearning for the touch of that water. Even if it's warm, even if it's like bath water, she'll take anything over walking through air that feels like molasses.

She grits her teeth. Nine agonizing days of telling herself trespassing is illegal, while she takes one more ice cube out of the freezer and rolls it around on her neck. Nine days of forcing her thoughts away from the probably cool, probably crisp water and onto the not so cool and not so crisp water coming out of her shower head.

She checks her watch. The only good thing about being on the waning side of summer is that the sun sets a little sooner.

And when it does, Rey will be ready.

\-------

Ben wakes with a start, as one unusually loud commercial blares from the TV. Why is the volume of this class action lawsuit ad so much higher? And why is that legal? Ben's almost certain it's illegal to make your clip that much louder, but he's still waking up, and he can't recall what case resulted in that ruling.

His face slowly disengages from the leather couch, making him wince. He knows that likely has as much to do with dried sweat as it does with some drool, working together to cement his face down.

Once he's finally free he stumbles to the kitchen, drinks a huge glass of water, eats some saltines standing over the sink, and prays he can sleep through the night and be back on a normal routine.

He's approaching the stairs when he sees a faint blue glow through the gauzy living room curtains.

His brow pinches. There are motion-activated garden lights out there, but they're yellow, and small and very bright, whereas this blue light looks broad and diffuse.

Ben sighs, making his way over, and uses one hand spread wide to pull back the many layers of sheer fabric over the window. 

There he sees a pair of long, thin, tan legs disappearing under the surface of the pool.

"There's a light in the pool?" He mutters to himself. He supposes he's never gone swimming at night. Hell, since his mom moved to be closer to her brother and Ben took over the house, he's not sure he's ever swam at all.

Nonetheless, he feels a hot flare of annoyance, so, without another thought, he opens the patio door and marches out in the direction of the faint blue light. 

\-------

Rey was right. The water is cool, and it is crisp, and when she first slides in, the goosebumps and shivers are the most welcome sensations she's ever felt. Soon she's used to it, but she needs only lift her limbs above the surface and into the damp, dark air to be reminded of how good the water feels.

She's barely moved in days, and so she takes advantage of the refreshment to swim a few laps, to paddle around, to do some handstands. At some point she swims down deep enough that she sets off a light, which fills the pool with an eerie glow that makes Rey's skin look sickly and strange. 

She doesn't own a swimsuit, so her cotton tank top and underwear are tugging heavy and waterlogged on her body. But neither that nor the sallow lighting can even dent the relief she feels.

She breaks the surface, smoothing back her hair and taking a few deep breaths, treading water. She savors the cool flow as her limbs move, and she's just taken a deep breath to plunge back down when she hears it. Loud, and angry.

" _Hey_!"

\-------

Ben sees her treading in the deepest part of the pool, the ends of her hair floating and swirling around her. She doesn't seem to hear him walking towards her. Doing his best to harness an authoritative tone, which frankly isn't that hard for him, Ben calls out to her.

He calls out just as she was about to go under again, and she gets startled.

He hears as she sucks in some air, but ends up sucking in a quantity of water, too. 

Into both her mouth and her nose.

She coughs, and snorts, and spits all of that water, which has now been inside her, back into the pool. The hacking fit lasts a long time. 

Ben grimaces. As much as he wanted to intimidate her into leaving, he didn't want to cause...this. He waits uncomfortably, bravado vanished, as she holds a hand over her face and expels the last of the water. When she finally lower her hand, he can see her eyes look red from the force of her coughing.

"What?" She says, her voice sounding raw, blinking over at him.

Ben musters what's left of his angry resolve and brings back that stern tone. "This is my pool."

She blinks, continuing to tread water, as if afraid to approach the side of the pool where he's standing, which he supposes counts for something. But her face grows defiant, and Ben never would have guessed what comes out of her mouth next. "You haven't even been here since before the heat wave started."

"I..." Ben's sure he misheard her. He gets distracted for a moment by her British accent, but then shakes his head to focus. "What?"

"The record-level heat. It's gone on for _nine_ days. And the entire time there's been no one here to take advantage of the pool's only purpose."

"And to you that meant it was okay to trespass?"

She gulps at that, and Ben feels a small flare of victory. "It means I never thought I would get caught. Nine days of silence and I assumed I was in the clear."

"Well. Sorry to ruin your plans to steal my pool, but..."

"I didn't steal it." She mutters.

Ben blinks. "All right, fine, what would you call it?"

"Dunno. Using, borrowing?"

He scoffs. "Are you really going to argue with me over the semantics of how you broke the law?"

Ben quietly admits to himself that arguing over the semantics of the law is something he does every day. It's his literal job. But she doesn't know he's a corporate lawyer, and he's not about to tell her.

She exhales a hard breath. "Fine. My point just is that like, nothing is stopping you from also using it. But since you clearly weren't, I thought it might be okay to take the opportunity." 

"Well you thought wrong, so I would appreciate it if you left." He says simply, and she sighs, staring at him for a moment longer, then paddling over to the wide, flat stairs in one corner. Before she can climb up, though, something occurs to him. "Wait, how did you even know no one was around?" She looks over her shoulder at him. "Have you been coming here and looking over the fence every day? Waiting to see when I would be gone?"

She laughs. It's a high, clear, sharp sound, which he doesn't expect to like so much. Sitting on the lowest step, still submerged up to her neck, she points south, to the apartment complex next door.

"I have not been creeping on your fence every day. I can see into your yard from my living room window."

Ben can see a light shining from the corner of an apartment on the fourth floor. "You live there?"

"Yep." She says, hugging her knees, and Ben can't help it, it makes him a little curious. Those apartments aren't especially nice, but they're accessible to a broad swath of people. He should know: his mother sold the land to a contractor who promised to build affordable housing when rent began to skyrocket. The sudden spike pushed out most middle-income residents, even those who had been in the neighborhood a long time. 

_Leia,_ he struggles not to roll his eyes, always _the bleeding heart._

"Do you live by yourself?"

"Uh, yep." She confirms warily.

"What do you do?"

"I'm a first year university student studying industrial engineering."

He stares at her face for a long moment. It's darker over by the steps, and he can't make out her fine details anymore. "You look older than eighteen."

"I had to um, work for a while, before I could enroll in school." She explains, and Ben takes note of her words, _had to_ not _wanted to_ , or even _chose to._

She says it so uncomfortably that Ben is sure there's a story underneath it somewhere, and maybe not a nice one. But he doesn't have a good reason to hear it, just as she did not have a good reason to be using his pool.

Right. The pool.

"Cool," he mutters, not wanting to leave her last statement totally unacknowledged. She seems to pick up on his cue, and rises to climb out.

It's then that Ben realizes, oh.

Oh no.

She isn't wearing a real swimsuit.

And what she's wearing instead is somehow...worse. Worse but also, in a dark way he doesn't want to admit, _better_.

It causes a hot blush to spread from his cheeks to his ears. He averts his gaze, staring at the pattern of ripples in the water instead.

It doesn't matter. The image is seared into his mind, of a navy blue camisole sticking to her long, slender form, the fabric bunching at the dip of her small waist. The water was cold enough that her nipples have hardened against the fabric and Ben could see them protruding, even in the low light.

Her bottom half is another matter altogether. Gray striped boy shorts, riding up a little in the back, plastered to her skin and giving him a very good idea as to the shape of her body underneath. He swears internally, watches as she gropes around in the dark for her things, and Ben is so distracted, so annoyed by the way she looks that he blurts, "Don't you even own a real swimsuit?"

She freezes, arms over her head, halfway through pulling on a flowered dress. He can see her eyes peeking over the fabric, and up here, with the assistance of the garden lights, he watches as her face gets revealed. The high cheekbones and delicate chin, the flat forehead and dark hair sticking wetly to her neck. 

"I moved in three weeks ago, and one of the boxes fell off my friend's truck on the way. I lost my swimsuit and haven't had time to buy a new one."

"Oh."

"Guess I won't have much reason to replace it, since I got caught on my first try using the pool." She says, and Ben's a little startled by the joke. She must be able to read that in his face, because she laughs again, and the sound echoes in Ben's mind. As she gathers up her towel and her phone, Ben realizes that this is the first conversation he's had in months that isn't about work, or something related to his work.

He feels a little embarrassed for himself, that this is how he broke that streak, that he can't remember the last time someone joked with him about something _other_ than an obscure section of legal code.

He's overcome with a desperate determination to prove that he can still do this, he can still talk to people and be a functioning human being. He convinces himself that he's not prolonging this conversation because of the way her body looks now that the dress is starting to stick to her, or the tinkle of her laugh, or the brightness in her eyes. 

That's definitely not why he scrambles to say something else before she walks away. "So, when you were doing all that snooping, you ever notice anything else interesting back here besides the pool?"

 _Anything else interesting?_ What, like the grill that's gone unused since his dad died, or his mother's row of hydrangeas he pays someone else to take care of? 

His cheeks burn red.

She meanders a few steps closer to him and then admits, "No, not really. I can only see the pool from my window, not the rest. And since I never saw any signs of life around it, ever, I kinda stopped looking. You're...not around much?" She looks expectantly at him, and when he doesn't answer she mumbles, "Sorry, I have no reason to be asking questions, of course."

"Of course." Ben echoes. Yet still he feels the need to justify. "I travel a lot for work, and when I'm here, I'm usually just sleeping and getting ready for my next trip."

Ben expects her to ask what he does. But instead she just nods, and says, "Do you like it?"

"What, traveling?" She nods again, and Ben raises one hand to rub the back of his neck. "I love it. I see tons of interesting places, get to spend a lot of time on my own, try new foods, rack up tons of airline points." 

"Nice," she says simply, and her feet start to turn in the direction of the gate.

_Say something else. Anything else. Ask her something._

"Do you think you would like it? Travel? I bet in industrial engineering there would be a lot of opportunities."

To Ben's surprise she shakes her head. He raises his eyebrows in question, and Ben watches a sad smile drift over her face. "No. I don't think I would. Once I moved here and realized how much I liked it, I rooted right down. Definitely a homebody."

Ben nods, and in the gap of silence that follows, he gets a profound sense of...alone-ness, from her. He wagers once again that there's a lot under the surface of her words. But he's aware he can't ask more. 

Next thing he knows, the motion activated pool light goes out, since no one is in there to set off the sensor. The back third of the yard is plunged into near complete darkness. He hears her gasp a little. The left side of her body is just barely illuminated by the garden lights. 

"Well," he says, and gestures into the now inky blackness near the gate, "wanna brave the dark, or come through the house and go out the front?"

"No, no, I can use the gate." She insists, but Ben watches her turn and hesitate. There are patio chairs, two brick steps, a counter, and some storage boxes full of gardening supplies in between them and the gate. A lot of options for tripping and falling.

"Lemme help." Ben mutters, and she starts to protest, but he ignores her and brushes past, resolutely _not_ noticing the warmth of her skin as he goes. He hears her follow. 

Despite not spending much time out here, the layout hasn't changed since Ben was a kid, so he pictures the path and leads them without incident all the way to the knotty pine gate. Over here, under the pergola and without any illumination nearby, it truly is pitch black. He reaches out a hand to find the latch and turns back to her. 

She is obviously less familiar, continues shuffling forward and bumps bodily into Ben. She yelps quietly, and he reaches out a hand to steady her. Ben can feel the huffs of her breath, and even though they're out in the open, between the heat and the dark he feels enclosed, like the two of them are shoved in a tiny closet or squished in a huge crowd. 

Neither of them speaks, as they do a weird sideways dance to put her on the gate-side and Ben back on the yard-side, his hand lingering on her arm the entire time.

Ben drops his hand, but it seems that as they turn in that small circle, she steps closer. With the darkness, there's nothing in his line of sight to distract him from remembering the way she looked as she exited the pool. Rivulets of water running down her tan legs. Delicate hands smoothing her hair away from her face. 

And she lives alone. Only been here three weeks, after moving from another country. And there was that wave of solitude he felt practically radiating off of her earlier, when she said she didn't think she would like to travel.

The darkness seems to make him a more honest man, because Ben finds his own solitude welling up inside him. His mind plays a montage of every beautiful hotel room he's stayed in over the last two years.

He's spent every minute in them alone. 

Before this strange moment can dredge up any other unwanted reminders, she mutters, "So uh, thanks for not calling the police on me."

Ben huffs a quiet laugh. "You're welcome...? I uh, didn't catch your name." 

"Rey."

"Rey." He nearly whispers, and Ben swears, _he swears_ , would testify in court, that he feels her shiver after he says it. 

"And you?" She asks softly.

"Ben." He truly, undeniably, definitely shivers, and feels a few other things too, when she says his name back.

"Enjoy this lovely yard, Ben." He hears the rusty creak as she lifts the latch.

He says nothing, feels the air shift as she moves away, then a soft whoosh as the gate closes gently behind her. 

He hears her feet crunch over the gravel on the other side one, two, three times before he says, "Rey!"

The footsteps stop, pause, then repeat, just three. "Yes?" she whispers, and Ben can tell she's speaking into the gap between the gate and the fence.

"I uh, I think you should buy a swimsuit."

She says nothing for a long moment, then mutters, "But I don't nee-"

"Now you do. Now you need one." He insists cryptically, and closes his eyes, waits.

She lets out a soft sound, a cross between delighted laughter and total surprise, and it makes Ben grin. 

"Thank you. I...Ben, my apartment doesn't even have air con."

"What?" Ben mutters, shocked, looking back up at the glow coming from her living room window. Leia would never stand for this.

"Yep." She affirms. "So I'll...be back sometime soon, then." He hums his assent. They both stand there for a moment, and then she calls goodnight, and Ben returns it, and he listens to her steps fade across the gravel parking lot. He hears her enter some outer door, and he lingers there, staring up at her corner, until he sees a slender shadow thrown on the wall of the living room opposite the window.

He heaves a sigh, shaking his head, at himself more than anything, and begins picking his way back towards the house. 

Ben's not one to jump at the chance for human interaction. It isn't like him to seek it out. He likes coming home to his empty house after every trip, exhausted from all the talking and smiling and posturing at work. So why is he taking this girl, who clearly has no trouble breaking the law and may have other questionable morals, and inviting her into his space?

He's not in the mood for any more self-reflection, and so he locks the patio door, eats a few more saltines, takes a shower, and pushes away every passing thought he has of her.

\-------

The next morning Rey leaves early for her 10 a.m. class and stops at Target. It's nearing the end of the season, so bathing suits are on sale, so she splurges and buys not one, but two. 

Just as the sun's finished setting, after she's home and fed and changed into her suit, she stares at the pool through her window, still feeling trepidation. _He gave you permission,_ her brain reminds her, and so she's forced to admit to herself that this is trepidation of a different kind.

She shoves it down, noting the way even her ears seem to be sweating in today's heat, and marches down the stairs, crosses to the gate.

Not five minutes after she's cannonballed into the heavenly water, setting off the motion activated light once more, she hears the drag of a sliding door and whips around to face the house.

Ben is carrying a fluffy white towel, closing the patio door with his back to her.

His very broad, very pale, very _naked_ back.

Rey knew he was tall, but without a dress shirt and tie on, she becomes so much more aware of the fact that he's _huge_. When he turns around Rey is helpless not to gasp at the well-defined planes of his chest, the way his abs seem to stretch down forever until they disappear into the waistband of his plain black swim trunks, hitting him a few inches above the knee.

A flurry of fragmented thoughts fly across her mind's eye. The glow of his pale skin in the glowing light of this water. Seeing the way his powerful body might propel him around, easily, almost without effort. The chance that their limbs might brush, as they each swim laps in opposite directions. His large hands, pressing his hair out of his face as he leans back against the wall. Watching a single bead of water drip from that hair and wind its way down his neck, onto his shoulder, across the muscular swell of his arm.

Maybe, if she asks, he'll try to teach her to float. She's never been able to figure it out. She could stare up at him as he tells her to slowly drift her arms and legs to keep herself up. She would sink anyway, and feel that broad hand spread over her lower back, warm and steadying, to help her stay up. 

"Stop it," she whispers to herself, trying to shake all that away. 

He's reached the edge of the pool now, and mutters low.

"Hey."

She takes a breath, unable to stop the grin that blooms on her face. "Hi."

He leaves his towel on a chair and steps forward.

Rey is so, totally fucked. 


End file.
